With ongoing postal and telemarketing pressures impacting marketing
budgets for many organizations this year, email marketing could become
the "silver lining " for many marketers. But how do you
create a successful email marketing campaign if you do not have a
substantial email database? That question may be one of the
largest Internet related challenges facing companies this year.

Research shows that the majority of organizations have email addresses
for less than 10% of their postal files. So how do you level the
playing field and start to add quality permission - based email
addresses to your database?

Here are some tips that you can use to cost effectively build your
email address database and increase your customer participation and
retention rates:

START TO ASK FOR IT!

Every communication or touch point with a customer should start or end
with a request for an email address. By utilizing the four
points below, you should be able to add email addresses for 5% to 10% of
your postal file over the course of one year.

1. Direct Mail Collection

Think about how much time and money you spent for copy and design on
your last new direct mail piece. Most companies have started to
ask their customers for their email address information within these
mailings. This is a great step forward. However, companies need to
look at one major improvement if they want to increase their email
address collection rates.

To date, most requests for email address information have been pushed,
shoved or jammed into whatever white space remains. It should be
no surprise that the success rate has been less than stellar.

To improve on these efforts, you need to provide your members with a
reason to release their email addresses to you. E-newsletters,
purchase confirmations, petitions, and special discounts and offers are
but a few of the benefits that will encourage your members to come on
board.

2. Web Page Collection

Many companies have an email address collection function in place via
the web. To improve your sign-up rates, add text below the email
request box that informs your visitors of the special email benefits
that they will receive (i.e. e-newsletters, purchase confirmations,
delivery updates, etc.) upon registering. You can also utilize a
pop-up link to inform users of these special benefits.

Finally, your email address request function should be available on
your home page. Don't make your users go and look for it. Every
click away from your home page reduces the chances of your users taking
an action and providing you with their email address information.

3. Existing Email Database Collection

Don't forget to ask the members of your existing customer base for
email addresses of their friends, family and associates. Viral
marketing is a powerful tool to use and is extremely cost effective!
You could ask them either to provide you with additional addresses or
simply to pass on your newsletter, email specific offers, or other
information to others they feel have similar interests.

4. Telemarketing Collection

Don't assume that your telemarketing agents are asking for email
addresses from potential customers. Ensure that your agents have
an updated script, which outlines the previously described benefits to
potential customers of providing their email addresses.

The suggestions above are a great start! Yet they really should
be viewed as a secondary plan for building your email database. To
exponentially and expeditiously grow your email database, please read
on!

EMAIL APPENDING

Utilizing an email appending service enables you to add email addresses
for up to 25% of your postal file, all within 3-4 weeks.

Email Appending - is the process of adding an individual's email
address to that individual's postal record in side your existing
database. This is accomplished by matching the postal database
against a third party, permission based database of postal and email
address information.

Best Practices - Email Appending is not a prospecting tool. The DMA
(Direct Marketing Association) and its interactive arm AIM (Association
of Interactive Marketing) have guidelines in place that dictate that
email appending only be used to append email addresses to your existing
opt-in postal record house file.

The Process - Your opt-in postal file is securely transferred to an
email appending provider, who will do an initial gross email address
match of your file against its opt-in database of postal and email
address records. Your appending provider will then send these
matches a permission-based message prepared by you. All bounces
and opt-out requests will be removed from the list. At that point
a valid permission-based email address file of your customers will be
delivered back to you.

Cost - Less than the price of a postal stamp!

IN SUMMARY

The first step of any successful email marketing effort is to build a
permission-based email address list of your customers. The
simplest, quickest and most cost-effective way to do this is through
email appending, which will enable you to add email addresses for up to
25% of your postal file. Secondary efforts of email address
collection via focused direct mail, web, viral and telemarketing
practices are also important and will enable you to add email addresses
for an additional 5% to 10% of your base on an annual basis.

Best of luck in building your email address database. As many
companies have already learned, the ROI and cost savings to be achieved
will far exceed your expectations.

Bill Kaplan
CEO
FreshAddress, Inc.

FreshAddress, Inc., The Email Address ExpertsTM, provides a
comprehensive suite of industry leading database and email
deliverability services to help companies increase their e-commerce
revenues. For more information on how we can help "Build and
Update" your email list, visit
http://freshaddress.com/biz or email
biz@freshaddress.com.